


Water on Mars

by Citystray



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: AU from S2E12 Phoenix, M/M, Walt doesn't let Jane die, just FYI this gets pretty explicit in parts, more tags to be added as required
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-10-28 04:37:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17780690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Citystray/pseuds/Citystray
Summary: He's standing right there, and he's going to watch Jane die. He's going to watch her overdose and choke to death. He could save her, but he isn’t.Jesse will discover her in the morning, and think she just rolled over in her sleep.Walt tries to push away the sudden mental image of Jesse waking to see her, lying lifeless beside him. Those blue eyes that Walt has seen shine with admiration and burn with trust, full of tears.“Damn it,” he hisses.Walt makes a different choice at the end of Phoenix.





	1. Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> Woop woop, my first ever BrBa fic. Any feedback is hugely appreciated!

_“You can’t give up on family.”_

The man from the bar’s words are still ringing in Walt’s ears as he pushes up the cardboard covering Jesse’s broken window and lets himself in. His eyes zero in on Jesse immediately, lying on his side on the bed, asleep or high. He doesn't stir when Walt says his name, or shakes him, or sits beside him.

“Jesse, wake up,” Walt says insistently, shaking him harder, “Jesse, _wake up_!” He doesn’t even know what he’s going to say, only that it _has to_ convince Jesse to stop using before he ends up overdosing. Jesse just responds with a short incoherent moan, more of an instinctive protest at being jostled than anything conscious. Walt shakes him harder; he sees something move in his peripheral vision but Jesse doesn’t stir. 

Walt’s gaze wanders to the nightstand. Needles. He picks one up, sees that it’s been used, and throws it back down. Not asleep. High. Jesse’s face is slack and his body is limp, like he’s dead already. 

Walt reviews his options. He could come back tomorrow, but who knows if they would still be here? For all he knows their plan for the morning is to leave for a Vegas wedding and a flight to Belize. He could call the police, have them take him to dry out wherever they put addicts, but he doesn’t think it would be a good idea to involve the police in a situation where someone has already threatened to expose him for cooking. 

He's mostly settled on waiting until Jesse is coherent enough to talk sense into when there’s a sharp spluttering sound from the other side of the bed. He looks up and Jane is convulsing on her back, vomit bubbling up between her lips, choking. 

He’s at the other side of the bed in seconds, reaching out to her, an automatic reaction to assist a person in distress. His gaze shifts from her to Jesse for an instant and he remembers the door slamming in his face just as he had begun to get through to Jesse. Contrary impulses war with each other for seconds that feel impossibly long. Jane is a person, someone’s daughter; she had blackmailed Walt, she had introduced Jesse to heroin, she was dragging Jesse away from him, onto a dangerous - deadly - path. In his mind he sees Jesse in her place, overdosing, choking, dying, and he begins to draw his hands back. 

This is how he can save Jesse’s life.

Jane spasms on the bed, her unconscious body struggling to clear her airways. Walt is going to watch her die. He feels as sick as he ever had from the chemotherapy. He's standing right there, and he's going to watch Jane die. He's going to watch her overdose and choke to death. He could save her, but he isn’t. 

Jesse will be away from her destructive influence. Jesse will never even suspect he was here. Jesse will discover her in the morning, and think she just rolled over in her sleep. Walt tries to push away the sudden mental image of Jesse waking to see her, lying lifeless beside him. It’s no use. In his mind’s eye, Walt sees Jesse’s anguish, sees those blue eyes that Walt has seen shine with admiration and burn with trust, full of tears.

“Damn it,” he hisses. He lunges forward and manhandling her limp body onto her side. He grabs his phone and dials 911. The operator is a woman who speaks almost maddeningly calmly, extracting information from Walt and giving him instructions on how to keep the girl who might kill Jesse alive in return.

As the red and blue lights glow through Jesse’s front window, Walt quickly kicks the duffle bag under the bed and hopes that he hasn’t just made a mistake.

He tells the paramedics that he’s Jesse’s uncle, that he came in and found them in bed with Jane supine and vomiting. They check her throat, suction the remaining vomit from her airways, and administer an opioid antagonist nasal spray first to her, then Jesse. They assure Walt that this will bring them around within minutes. 

This turns out to be true. The paramedics are about to load Jane onto a stretcher when Jesse wakes up. He sits up, trembling and looking around with wide eyes that get even wider when he sees the paramedics lifting Jane’s limp body. He scrambles to his feet, panicked. He's unsteady on his feet from the sudden reversal of the heroin’s effects. Walt has to reach out quickly to steady him and Jesse turns to toward him sharply, apparently realising for the first time that Walt is in the apartment too.

“Mr White?” Jesse asks. He doesn't wait for an answer, instead asking the paramedics, “What’s happening? What’s wrong with her?”

“Aspiration of vomit - she was on her back, threw up and inhaled it. Possible heroin overdose. We’ve given her narcan, and you, too. You two are very lucky your uncle was here,” one of the paramedics says. Jesse looks automatically to Walt but doesn't meet his eyes. “Does she have any family nearby to be contacted?”

“Her dad,” Jesse says. He steps away from Walt’s steadying grip, finds Jane’s jeans on the floor and grabs her phone from the pocket. Over his shoulder, Walt can see Jesse find the contact labelled “Daddy”.

Jesse reads the phone number to the paramedic, who writes it down and wheels Jane’s stretcher towards the front door. Jesse follows with his eyes locked on Jane’s pale face. Walt grabs Jesse’s discarded shirt and follows a moment after. The paramedics load the stretcher into the back and she turns to face Jesse. “Ideally, your breathing should be monitored for the next few hours. If you want to go to the hospital, we can have another ambulance sent out for you.”

“What?” Jesse says, anxiety rising in his voice, “I’m not - I don't need to go to the hospital, but - I can’t go with her?”

“I’m afraid not. We might have to work on her if she has any problems on the way to the hospital and we’ll need space if that happens.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get a cab -”

“I’ll drive you,” Walt cuts in firmly, holding Jesse’s shirt out to him and motioning towards his car. 

He’s prepared for at least some resistance, so he's a little surprised when Jesse just gives him another glance that doesn't involve eye contact and mutters, “okay.” He pulls his shirt on and obediently follows Walt to his car.

Somewhat to his relief, Jesse doesn’t ask why Walt was in his apartment in the first place. In fact, he’s silent throughout the drive to the hospital. Once or twice Walt checks the rear view mirror and, out of the corner of his eye, sees Jesse surreptitiously staring at him, but he looks away immediately once he realises he’s been caught.

At the hospital, Jesse walks ahead of Walt, practically jogging to the reception.

“Hey, is Jane Margolis here?” he asks the women in scrubs behind the main desk.

“Are you family?” she asks, fingers already flying over the keyboard. Jesse hesitates for a second. 

“Her boyfriend.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we only allow family in emergencies. Her father is with her,” she assures Jesse, whose expression suggests he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or more anxious.

“Well, I suppose we’ll have to wait until you can go in or her father comes out,” Walt observes, taking a seat, and Jesse looks apprehensive but agrees. 

They wait in silence. Walt knows he should be filling it with a sales pitch so persuasive that Jesse will have no choice but to go clean, but his mind is blank. Jesse stands staring at a whiteboard with the nurses’ shifts on it as though it’s the most fascinating thing in the world, moving his weight from foot to foot and occasionally pacing a few steps. Walt finds himself biting his tongue to repress his irritation at his fidgeting, barely managing to keep his temper as he insists that Jesse take a seat. Jesse obeys without looking at him, then switches tactics to using his hands to fidget, rubbing the material of his shirt between his fingers or biting his nails. A few times he tries reading one of the terrible waiting room magazines but gives up after skimming a couple articles and flipping randomly through the pages. Then it’s back to drumming his fingers on his armrest or picking at his cuticles. Walt counts to ten, a strategy Skyler had once insisted they try when frustrated with each other after seeing it on some daytime TV show. It works enough that he doesn't yell at Jesse, but not enough that his irritation subsides.

“I’ll go get us some coffee,” Walt says. Having been a grad student, a teacher, and the father of a newborn, he knows that caffeine is essential for stress management.

He takes the opportunity to call Skyler. It’s not the most pleasant phone call he’s ever had: after a moment’s deliberation he elects to tell her that Jesse Pinkman (“Your weed dealer?!”) had called him (“I suppose he kept my number from when I bought from him.”) hysterical, thinking his girlfriend had overdosed, that he couldn’t turn his back on a desperate former student, and that he’s taken him to the hospital. She accepts this, but in a tone that suggests that Walt will be called on to explain himself much more thoroughly in the days to come.

Walt returns with two polystyrene cups of coffee from a machine. Jesse takes his cup with a mumbled “Thanks,” and without meeting his eyes. Walt can’t remember Jesse making eye contact with him once since he had woken up. Instead, he looked down or to the side, like he had when Walt had come to his apartment earlier that evening and Jesse had come slinking to the doorway, radiating shame.

The memory spurs Walt on to talk to Jesse like he’d meant to, but as he opens his mouth to speak, still searching for the right words, the doors to the emergency room open. The man Walt had spoken to at the bar walks out. He looks tired and harried and subtly sad. 

Jesse’s eyes focus in recognition and he’s instantly up and approaching the man, a little cautiously. He says something to the man from the bar, too quietly for Walt to hear, and something about the man’s expression tells Walt that he’d better get over there.

“... said she would have died if someone sober hadn’t found her,” the man bites out as Walt gets close enough to hear. Jesse looks as though he’s been struck. “So what do you think, have you done enough yet -”

“He had never even touched heroin before he met her,” Walt snarls, cutting him off. Fury burns inside him at this man blaming Jesse for Jane’s state - she had led him to begin using heroin, she had blackmailed Walt for access to a frankly dangerous amount of money for two addicts, she had slammed the door in his face when he was beginning to get through to Jesse. The man looks slightly taken aback, either at Walt’s tone or his words, but only slightly less hostile. Walt forcibly gentles his tone as he asks, “How is she?”

“Stable. Awake,” the man replies, somewhat begrudgingly. “They’ve sobered her up. She threw up, aspirated some of it. They've cleared her lungs but they're keeping her overnight for observation. She’s going to rehab as soon as she’s cleared to leave hospital,” he adds with a brief pointed stare at Jesse. He looks at Walt for a moment as though trying to place him. “You’re the man from the bar,” the man from the bar realises, “so you’re the one who found her?” Walt nods curtly. “Thank you,” he says, extending his right hand. “Don Margolis.”

“Walter White,” Walt says, shaking his hand in spite of his lingering annoyance and Don Margolis forces a tired smile. Walt leans in to speak quietly, “Which, er, which rehab is she...? I’m going to try to get him to get treatment.” He hadn't been intending on this at all, hadn't even thought of it, but it seems so obvious now. Margolis looks like nothing could interest him less than Jesse’s rehabilitation, but tells him. Walt can tell by the look they exchange that he and Margolis both know that Jesse and Jane in the same rehab would be a disaster. 

Margolis departs in the direction of the coffee machines and Walt turns to suggest that Jesse try to visit now while her father is occupied, only to find that Jesse is already at the front desk. He’s deep in conversation with the woman behind the desk but it doesn’t seem to be going well; he’s alternately arguing his case and pleading.

“Just five minutes,” he says desperately. “Just let me see her - just let me see that she’s -” his voice fails in the middle of his sentence and he’s left staring helplessly at her. Walt can’t see his face, but he’s been exposed to Jesse’s expression of desperate pleading before, so it’s not surprising to him when she looks exasperated but relents.

When he returns from seeing Jane, Jesse looks slightly better. He’s still pale and drawn, but he manages to cover his anxiety with a mask of brittle calm, and he leaves willingly, following Walt into the parking lot.

Walt knows he has delayed long enough. He needs to broach the subject now. He inhales deeply, turns around. Stops. “Jesse...?”

Maybe it’s the aftereffect of Jesse’s anxiety, waiting for so long to find out that Jane is safe. Maybe it’s the thought of what might have happened. Maybe it’s just because they've been at the hospital for over an hour, longer than the EMTs had said the narcan would last, and Jesse’s emotional walls are being broken down by the resurgent effects of the heroin. All Walt knows is that it’s late enough that the only light is from the hospital and streetlights, but that’s more than enough to show the tear tracks on Jesse’s face. He wipes his face on his sleeve, quickly but too late to conceal his tears, trying and failing to affect a nonchalant expression.

“Jesse...” Walt says again, voice softening involuntarily, stepping towards him. In the glow of the streetlights, his skin is lit pale gold and his eyes are the colour of water over a precipitous drop. Walt places his hand on Jesse’s shoulder gingerly and feels it jerk slightly in a sob that Jesse can’t quite smother.

“It’s my fault,” Jesse chokes out, “I got her back onto drugs - if she’d - if anything had happened to her, it’d be my - I’d have _killed_ her,” he says in a rush, his voice thickening until his last words are a pained moan and tears are streaking down his face again. He sobs harder as Walt puts his arms around him but doesn’t resist, fisting his hands in Walt’s jacket and burying his face in his chest as he cries. Walt shushes him, rocks gently, strokes his hair.

“If you hadn’t been there...” Jesse chokes out. If Walt hadn't been there, she would probably have remained on her side, unlikely to choke. He decides to say nothing. Better that Jesse think that it had happened by chance, better for him to understand how treacherous and uncertain his path is.

“But I was,” Walt says firmly, drawing back and raising Jesse’s face with a gentle hand under his jaw. This is the first time Jesse has met his eyes since they were back in his apartment. Now or never. “Jesse, the reason I was there tonight... I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to... I think you need to quit using. What happened tonight just shows how dangerous it can get. I think you need to go to rehab. I’ll take you there, we can go tonight, I...” he sighs deeply, steeling himself. “Jesse, I met Jane’s father tonight, before I went to your apartment the second time. He told me... you can never give up on family, and I’m not going to. You... you’re like family to me, son. I just want you to be safe.”

Jesse’s eyes are lit by the streetlights, brimming with tears. He's silent for a long instant, as though he’s processing what he’s just heard. Slowly, he nods, eyes locked with Walt’s. “Once Jane gets out of the hospital,” Jesse says, his voice still shaking slightly. Walt sighs. 

“I’ll wait with you, then.”

Hours later, Walt sits on the lounge chair beside Jesse’s. Jesse is wrapped in the green robe that is the uniform for rehab; Walt doesn’t think he’s ever seen Jesse wear green before. Not that that’s the strangest thing about this situation, in which they’re sitting together in the outdoor recreation area of a drug addiction rehabilitation centre where Walt has convinced Jesse to check in. Jesse alternately looks straight ahead and glances at Walt in a way he would almost consider shy on someone else. Walt struggles to find words to fill the awkward silence between them.

“Just so you know, I won’t be back for a while,” he says, because he’s just realised he hasn’t told Jesse yet. “I’m gonna have my surgery on Friday. It should go well,” he adds quickly as Jesse turns his head sharply to fix Walt with a worried look. “But if not, Saul will take care of things - he has your money, he’s keeping it for you.” Jesse doesn’t look overly reassured.

“Okay. Can - can you call sometime after? Just so, y’know,” Jesse’s cheeks flush pink but he continues determinedly, “just so I know you’re okay. You could just leave a message if they don’t let you talk to me.” This was a possibility. Jesse had given Jane the number of the clinic, but whether phone calls were permitted depended on the patient, as well as their relationship with the caller. Apparently a key facet of rehab was limiting contact with negative influences, even through the phone. Walt appreciates their caution even as he resents the possibility of it being applied to him. The last thing Jesse needs is more contact with her.

“I’ll make sure they let you know. Don’t worry about me,” Walt says, because Jesse doesn’t need any distractions from recovery and because he’s so tired of people worrying about him. He can take care of himself, and he can take care of them. He’s his own man, he’s capable, and he’s never been more sure of it than he has since he’s been diagnosed.

They say their goodbyes and Walt is headed towards the exit when Jesse suddenly calls out, “Hey, Mr White!” and Walt turns and looks back at him. 

Jesse looks sheepish, rubbing the back of his neck and visibly forcing himself to meet Walt’s eyes. He looks like there are a hundred things he wants to say but none that he can bring himself to. Finally he settles on, “Good luck, man!”


	2. Serenity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a pretty short, kinda intermediate chapter, so you guys get two today!

This is the first time Jesse has ever been to rehab. Serenity is a nice place, even though Jesse doesn’t understand why it’s shaped like an onion. It fits its name, with its calm and relaxed atmosphere. 

He doesn’t get visitors. Mr White had called him a few days after he’d checked in to tell him his surgery had gone well but that he probably wouldn’t be able to come to see him until he picked Jesse up when his program is over. Jesse understands. Mr White has to take time to recover, and he has to spend time with his actual family. Jesse’s parents don’t visit, but then, they probably don’t know he’s here. Jesse hasn’t told them. He hasn’t seen or spoken to them since he was kicked out of his aunt’s place. He guesses that for all they know, he’s shooting up in a gutter somewhere or something. He thinks about calling them sometimes. There’s a ten minute time limit on phone calls even when they’re allowed, so there wouldn’t be enough time for it to get really awkward. He wonders how they’d react if they knew that he was in rehab. Would they be happy? Proud that he’s trying? Disappointed that he can’t do it alone? Would they think it won’t make a difference? 

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t call them.

After the past few months of stress, traumatic shit, and near-death experiences, the therapeutic activities at Serenity are a nice change of pace. He likes working in the garden, transplanting the pansies into the garden beds. He’s always liked working with his hands, and it reminds him of when he was little and Aunt Ginny would let him help in her garden. The backyard was full of flowers when she was alive.

They have art supplies in one of the indoor areas. They hold structured classes in painting techniques and still life drawing there every other day, but Jesse usually avoids those. He goes there alone sometimes and draws. Usually it’s just random doodling, like he used to do in high school to satisfy the urge to fidget during boring classes. Now, he usually does it to have something to do with his hands while he thinks about stuff. What the counsellors say. What he’s gonna do when he gets out of here. Mr White. 

Jane.

He had gotten to see her, just for a couple minutes, after she was released from the hospital in the early hours of the morning after. She was kind of quiet, and had changed her mind about rehab. This was a relief - Jesse was determined that he’d keep his word to Mr White that he’d go to rehab, but part of him had still dreaded the possibility that Jane would still want to go through with plan to go to New Zealand right away. But she was going, and said she was glad that he was going too. She promised to call him as soon as she got out. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she just hugged him and then got into her dad’s car.

She had looked much healthier then than she had the previous night, but when Jesse thinks of her it’s the image of her pale, still face as she lay limp on the stretcher that comes to mind. 

Mr White had been right. Two junkies with a dufflebag full of money... they would both have been dead within a week.

And Jane had been eighteen months sober before she met him. She only relapsed because he just had to hit the meth pipe when he couldn’t cope with the guilt of Combo’s death. She could have died because of him. She almost did die. The only reason she survived is that Mr White had come back to try to help Jesse.

His counsellor tells them that the crucial thing for rehabilitation and true change is self-acceptance. How can he accept himself as the person who almost killed the woman he loves more than anything?

He uses charcoal for the first time, tries to recreate her on paper, sketching the sleek dark lines of her hair, the smooth curves of her face. He tries to draw Mr White a couple of times, too. These attempts all end up in the wastebasket. He can’t get it quite right. Even when there’s a superficial resemblance, he can’t capture the gleam of Jane’s eyes, the sharp humour in her face. He can’t recreate Mr White’s usual impatient focus, or the uncharacteristic softness in his eyes when he’d pleaded with Jesse to go to rehab.

He tries to draw himself sometimes. Jane has said that all of his old superhero ideas looked like him. He thinks of Apology Girl and draws someone new: Self-Acceptance Man, with the power to learn and grow from his mistakes. Dressed in armour, with messy hair and a billowing cape. It’s dumb, but it makes him feel a little better. It makes it a little easier to see a way forward.

_______

 

Walt’s life has fallen down around him.

_I deserve this,_ he had said when they were trapped in the desert, and the part of him that said it has to admit that it’s still true. He has lied to his family over and over, gotten into multiple situations where he could have died - in the RV in the desert, with Tuco - and all they would have known is that he’d never come home. He had known from the beginning that they could never find out what he was really doing, knew it would fracture his family.

God... if only it could have happened after he was already gone. Perhaps it’s selfish, but he wishes he could have died peacefully, surrounded by his family and secure in Jesse’s promise to make sure they would receive Walt’s share. They could have gotten it as a fait accompli, with no decisions to make on its morality and with their memories of the man who earned it already softened by grief and nostalgia.

But he’s still here. He’s here, and his family is somewhere else. He’s been in this apartment for two weeks, while Skyler and his children are back at the family house. He still takes Junior to school; Skyler cannot cut him out completely without arousing suspicion, no matter how much she clearly wants to. There’s some small consolation in the fact that she hasn’t told anyone else: Walter Junior loves his father, but, much as it rankles Walt to admit, he idolises his DEA uncle, and Walt doubts his son would be so fully on his side if he knew.

But Skyler... he’s lost her. She thinks he’s a criminal, she wants to keep the kids away from him, she’s demanding a divorce. Once she’s set her mind on something, changing her mind is like controlling the tides. 

Regardless, this is practically all he spends his time thinking about. How he can convince her, what words in what sequence can explain to her why he did what he did, that it was all for her and their children. That he’d only wanted his family to be secure, for them to be provided for when he was no longer around to care for them. 

He searches for the right words to explain to her that he wishes none of this had ever happened, that he had to do it.

What has he even gained from what he’s done? Money he cannot give his family and lies contaminating his relationships with everyone he cares about.

Well. Almost everyone. There’s still one person who knows everything that Walt has done and accepts it, understands it. Who knows that everything Walt has done, he’s done for his family.

Jesse opens the door of Walt’s car, slides into the passenger seat.

“Yo, Mr White,” Jesse says.

“Hey,” Walt replies, “Did everything... go well?” He doesn’t know the etiquette for this situation, asking someone how they went at rehab for heroin addiction. He feels like he’s asking Jesse how he went on his first day of school. He glances sidelong at Jesse as he starts the car and finds him looking thoughtful.

“Yeah,” he says slowly, then more surely, “yeah.”

“How is Jane?” Walt asks, even though she’s the last thing he wants to think about. He would be happiest if the past two weeks had wiped her from Jesse’s memory completely.

“She’s still in rehab. Her place doesn’t let you get phone calls unless it’s from family. She should get out soon, she’s gonna call me when she does.”

“Good, good,” Walt says absently. It was a strange world, where you can get someone hooked on heroin and have them waiting faithfully for you to come back to them, but you can commit a crime to care for your family and end up exiled from them, with your wife threatening to turn you in if you don’t submit to a divorce.

Within a few minutes of the conversation lapsing, Walt realises that he’s not sure where he should be driving. “You going back to your apartment?”

Jesse shrugs in his peripheral vision. “I guess.” He sounds distinctly unenthused. Walt supposes he can see why: last time Jesse was in his apartment, he was watching the paramedics wheel Jane out. Walt had called Saul after Jesse was checked into rehab and had him send one of his guys around to secure the money and get rid of any drug paraphernalia, so he’s not worried about Jesse finding needles and relapsing or anything.

But Walt is sick of being alone and rejected, and if Jesse doesn’t want to return to his apartment either...

“Why don’t you stay with me for a few days? Just ‘til you get back on your feet.”

Jesse gives him a quizzical sideways glance. “What, stay with you and _your family_?”

“I’m... I’ve got a place of my own right now,” Walt says and, seeing Jesse’s eyebrows rise, quickly adds, “purely temporary, just a little hiccup.”

Jesse isn’t deterred. It’s one of his best and worst traits, that he won’t give up when he knows there’s something wrong with Walt. “What happened?”

Walt keeps his eyes on the road and tries not to let his hands tighten on the wheel. “Skyler... found out.”

“ _What?_ ” Jesse says with a sudden note of anxiety. “She found out? Like... found out?” Jesse gives an expansive but vague gesture that Walt assumes encompasses the methamphetamine, their partnership, all the incidental crimes along the way.

“Yes.”

“Well, what’re you gonna do, man?” Jesse asks. He still looks worried when Walt takes a glance at him, but has calmed a little in the face of Walt’s forcibly impassive reaction.

“Everything will be _fine_. She hasn’t gone to the police. She just needs time,” Walt insists. Jesse quirks an eyebrow at him skeptically but lets it drop. Walt quickly switches back to the original topic before Jesse changes his mind and starts digging again. “So in the meantime, you can stay with me until you figure out what you want to do.”

Jesse leans back in his seat and turns his head towards the window. When Walt looks over at him, he could swear that Jesse’s cheeks have pinkened. “Okay. Thanks.”


	3. Strange World

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi readers! Today is my birthday, but I have a gift for you. The gift... of porn. Also please excuse my lack of science knowledge and shameless paraphrasing of Wikipedia ^^;

This is the second day Jesse has been staying with Mr White, sleeping on his couch. It’s not the most comfortable place he’s ever slept, but it doesn’t make his back ache like that shitty bed in the RV did. 

Mr White is at work during the days, but Jesse still feels kind of uncomfortable just hanging around his apartment, so he finds ways to occupy himself during the day. 

Today, he’s walked to a nearby park. He figures this is something the counsellors at rehab would approve of: physical activity, sunshine. He’s sitting under a tree when his phone rings, watching a mourning dove pecking at the ground a small distance away. He takes his phone from his pocket and, when he sees the name on the screen, answers immediately. 

“Yo, Jane!” he says excitedly. “You get sprung from Alcatraz?” Her rehab centre was even stricter than Jesse’s, and had firmly disallowed all phone calls from anyone but relatives. This is the first opportunity he’s had to hear her voice in weeks.

“Hey, Jesse,” she laughs, “You know no jail can hold me!” 

Her voice is determinedly casual, like it had been when she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge his hurt at being snubbed in front of her dad.

They make small talk for a while, comparing their rehabs. Hers had had patients participate in arts and crafts, indoor rock climbing, equine therapy. He listens, rapt as ever in everything she says, as she describes grooming a horse and how it had nibbled gently at her hair as though it was trying to return the favour. He tells her about his new attempts at art, that he’d tried out charcoal and paints.

“Sounds cool. You’ll have to show me some of your new work sometime,” she says.

“Yeah. So now that you’re out... are you back  at your place?” he asks, trying not to sound ridiculously eager to see her, then trying not to notice how badly he’s failing at it. He’s got his money from Saul. They’re clean now, they can go to New Zealand. They can go tonight, if that’s what she wants. 

“I’m staying at my dad’s tonight, going home tomorrow. But, Jesse...” she trails off. Her casual front breaks just a tiny bit. “I think maybe it’d be a good idea if we take a break.”

It’s like a kick in the gut. He loves her more than anything, and losing her feels like losing a part of himself. But... he loves her more than anything, and he wants her to be safe. Healthy. The things he’d taken away from her when he’d introduced her to meth and made her backslide into heroin. He thinks of her eighteen month chip. He had been a cancer on her life, infiltrating and poisoning. If he loves her, he has to let her cut him out cleanly.

“Jesse? Are you still there?” Jane asks. 

“Yeah,” he says, and has to clear his throat to get rid of the thickness in his voice. “Yeah, I’m here. That, uh, that might be a good idea. Look, Jane, I’m, um... I’m sorry. I know you’d never have started using again if it wasn’t for me.”

She’s silent for a long moment, and when she speaks her voice is small but gentle. “My dad said there was a guy with you at the hospital. Walter White?”

“Yeah.”

“Dad said that he said, you know. That you’d never been on heroin before you met me.”

Jesse remembers Mr White saying that, remembers being kind of surprised. He’s used to being considered the bad influence, or at best on par with the rest of his junkie friends. It had kind of reminded him of the one time he’d come home to his aunt’s place smelling of pot and something harder. She hadn’t gotten mad or yelled like his parents would have. She’d just... looked so sad, like Jesse doing it had hurt her more than it had hurt him. She’d asked him if those boys were really his friends. He’d stayed off the meth after that unless he was staying the night somewhere, kept pot to parties and the occasional smoke behind the school with his friends. He’d never wanted to see that look on her face. “Yeah, but...”

She interrupts, “Well, maybe I wasn’t so good for you either. Maybe we weren’t so good together.”

She _was_ good for him. She made him happy, had been his biggest comfort after Combo, until it hadn’t been enough. Until he’d fallen back into meth and dragged her down too. She waits a few seconds for him to respond, then continues when he doesn’t.

“We can still be friends, Jesse. I really would like to see the stuff you’ve been working on. And maybe after a while, when we’re both better...”

He cuts her off. “Yeah. I’ll send you a couple pieces when I’ve finished them. I’ll, uh, I’ll get my stuff from my apartment later, you guys can keep whatever I leave behind and rent it out as, like, partially furnished or whatever...” he says, a little desperate to finish the conversation before he loses control and starts crying. She hasn’t told him he has to move, but it’s not like they can just keep being neighbours after this. They had told him in rehab it was important to keep your distance from people who might influence you to start using again, like he already had influenced her. And he already knew it was important to stay away from recent exes for a while.

“Okay,” Jane says. She sounds kind of like her voice is on the verge of breaking too. “Let me know your new address when you’ve moved. I’ll send you some stuff too.”

Jesse agrees and he and his once-girlfriend, now - what? Friend? Penpal? Nothing? end the conversation.

He stares over the expanse of grass numbly. He’s grateful that it’s a weekday afternoon and there’s no one here to see when his resolve breaks and tears start streaming down his face.

 

After he leaves the park, he drives around randomly, lost in his thoughts, until he finds he’s ended up back in his old neighbourhood. 

There’s a For Sale sign outside Ginny’s house. It looks so different now, even just through the window. He hadn’t really changed anything in the years since she’d died. He couldn’t bring himself to change the cheerful decor and homey atmosphere that had seemed so much more inviting to him as a teenager than his own home. He’d never even removed the bare foam mattress and spare blanket that had served as his bed in Ginny’s last weeks, when he’d slept in her room in case she needed anything at night. The last time he’d been in that bedroom was when he’d chosen her clothes for the funeral.

 _They could have said something to me,_ he thinks. When he’d been thinking of selling it, he’d talked to them. If he was going to completely change and sell a place someone used to live, he’d talk to them. But then, his parents hadn’t wanted to talk to him for quite some time. They would talk to him, if he called, or if he showed up at their house. They would have an awkward conversation with him, his mom would make some vague attempt at mothering him, his dad would give him advice on finding a job. There was the occasional attempt at an intervention. They didn’t talk about personal stuff. 

“Jesse?”

Jesse starts and turns. “Dad?” Jesse hadn’t even heard him approach but his dad is only a few feet away. “Hey. Fixing up the house, huh?”

“Doing a little work, yeah.” His dad is amiable but stiff, like he’s talking to an unpredictable stranger.

“Well, I’ll bounce. It’s cool,” Jesse assures him. He doesn’t want to stay where he’s not wanted. He starts to head towards his car when his dad speaks again.

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,” Jesse says, buoyed by the possibility that his dad might actually want to speak to him. “I just happened to be driving by and saw the sign. So you’re selling the place?”

They make small talk about what his parents have done with the place, all their renovations. Jesse makes the appropriate gestures, mentions something he saw in People or some other magazine about renovations increasing resale value. There’s a raw part of him that can’t help but be hurt that they’ve decided on all these changes, on selling the house, without even talking to him, but mostly he’s just tired of conflict and loneliness. 

He’s never been the son they wanted, not the way Jake is, but for the past few years the biggest problem between them has been the drugs. Maybe now things can be different.

But things aren’t different. Jesse suggests that he could come over to dinner sometime. His dad agrees and clearly doesn’t mean it. Jesse thinks about telling him about Jane, about Mr White, about rehab. He doesn’t. 

Driving back to Mr White’s apartment, he thinks. His parents don’t want him back. They probably never will. Maybe finding that meth lab in the basement was a relief to them, a cast-iron reason to finally finish disowning him.

He thinks about that meth lab, and about Saul. He thinks about Ginny. 

He remembers that when Ginny was diagnosed, he had called his mom and told her her sister had cancer. They had talked for a couple minutes before she promised to call him back later. She hadn’t; he had called her back the next day. A couple months later he had been pissed off enough to stop calling them with updates and just wait until _they_ called _him_. 

After three weeks he’d broken and called. He remembers because Ginny had had a regular appointment every Monday at 2:00. He’d been in senior year and would ditch after his first class of the day (English, with the young teacher who could have made way more as a model than a teacher and usually wore something low-cut on Mondays) to make her lunch and take her to her appointment. He’d written down everything the doctor said in his English notebook alongside a few rare notes from class. He’d forgotten everything he’d written about Hamlet’s character flaws and narrative structures of Shakespearean tragedies but he’d never forgotten things like “lesions on the brain” and “stage three”.

It seems wrong, for his parents to profit off the house. They had abandoned her. They had abandoned Jesse, back then when he had to care for Ginny alone. Now he’d shown up clean and healthy and his dad still didn’t want anything to do with him. It isn’t enough. He’ll never be enough for them. 

Whatever. He isn’t going to beg for their attention or love. He doesn’t want anything they don’t want to give him. He’s not going to try to get the house back, either, though. Everything in it that reflected Ginny is gone now, anyway, wiped away and replaced with new tiles and granite countertops. There’s nothing there for him anymore.

Eventually, for lack of anything else to do and because he should probably get on with moving soon and needs money for that, he pays Saul a visit. He gets his money without a problem and gives Saul some vague assurance about ‘talking to him’ when Saul complains about Mr White refusing to cook more meth. Jesse knows it’s true that Mr White is an incredible cook - like Michelangelo might be pushing it a bit, but it’s not wrong - but he can’t help but feel a little irritated that Saul makes no mention of his guy wanting Jesse back, too. He’d done half the work for their big sell.

Whatever. It doesn’t matter anyway. Mr White is out, and so is Jesse.

Besides, even if Jesse had wanted to, Mr White doesn’t seem like he’s much in the mood to be talked into anything lately. Even though he’d insisted that everything would be fine between him and his wife, sometimes when he and Jesse were talking and there was a gap in the conversation Mr White would just look off into the distance, looking sad and wistful and maybe kinda frustrated. 

Jesse feels like he knows that look from the inside out: it’s the look of someone who’s lost everything. He thinks maybe he looked like that after he got kicked out.

So Jesse can relate. And, that time when he’d felt like he’d lost everything, he hadn’t: he’d still had Mr White. And Mr White still has Jesse. He’d kinda like to tell him that, but he’s always been terrible with words, and even if he wasn’t, he can’t think of a single way to say it that wouldn’t sound totally gay.

But actions speak louder than words, right? So maybe Jesse can just do something nice for him. He can’t tidy the apartment - God help him if he disrupted Mr White’s anal system of what random crap goes where. Mr White has plenty of money, and Jesse doesn’t really know what kind of stuff he likes, so gifts are out.

In the end, he makes a couple stops on the way back to Mr White’s apartment. First he grabs a bottle of nice brandy from a liquor store. It’s maybe not the best idea for a recovering addict, but alcohol has never been that big a thing for him. He likes it, especially socially, but it’s never been a crutch like the meth and even the pot had been. 

Afterwards, he orders a pizza with just about everything on it. Mr White is already home by the time Jesse arrives, brandishing the pizza triumphantly as he steps through the door. “Yo, I took care of dinner,” he declares. Mr White looks momentarily stunned, then exasperated as he realises it’s junk food. 

Jesse flips the pizza box’s lid up and tilts it down to show Mr White. “See? Protein _and_ something green,” he says, gesturing to the vegetable and meat toppings. “In fact, you’ve got grain, dairy, vegetables, meat... this stuff practically _is_ the food pyramid! And check it out, yo,” he holds a slice upright, crust down, vaguely resembling a misshapen, floppy pyramid. “Am I blowing your mind?”

Mr White is still looking at him like Jesse is the most ridiculous person in the world, but it’s mixed with amusement, and after a moment a slight smile breaks through. “It looks good,” he admits, and the warm glow in Jesse’s chest is just because he’s glad something he’s done has actually been received well, that’s all.

Brandy and pizza taste _weird_ together. They eat and drink on the couch, watching TV. Jesse flips through the channels until he finds something that can hold his attention: a Mythbusters special where they destroy a bunch of cars testing movie myths. Mr White doesn’t complain about Jesse’s choice of programming, either because Mythbusters has science in it or because of all the brandies he’s knocked back already. 

Jesse hasn’t had anything alcoholic for weeks, so he’s got a warm fuzziness in his brain even though he’s only halfway through his second glass. Mr White is drinking quicker, like it’s gonna help with how he feels. It doesn’t seem to be working: he looks more relaxed, but kind of distant and sad.

“I’ve lost my family,” he murmurs. Jesse doesn’t hear him at first because he says it at the same time as a car in TV crashes through a chain-link fence.

“What?”

“I’ve lost my family.”

This takes Jesse’s attention off the TV. He sits up straighter and turns his body to face Mr White. Mr White is staring blankly at the TV. “Come on, man, no you haven’t. Like you said, your wife just needs some time.”

Mr White shakes his head. “She wants a divorce. She doesn’t want me to see the kids.”

Jesse doesn’t know what to say. “I, uh, I heard from Jane today. And saw my dad. She thinks we should, um, we should like take a break. And I guess my parents don’t really wanna know me. I know it’s not the same thing,” he adds quickly, because this is the kind of thing that sometimes makes Mr White say something awful and he really doesn’t want to deal with that right now. The brandy has insulated him from his feelings enough that he can talk about Jane without crying, but not so much that he feels up to enduring a patented Walter White Bitch Out. “But, I mean, I kinda get it.”

Mr White doesn’t respond. Jesse knocks back the rest of his glass of brandy and gets up to refill their glasses, then sits down right beside Mr White and tries again. “Maybe it’ll just take a while, y’know? It’s probably a lot to find out - I mean, she practically kicked my ass when she thought I was your weed dealer.” Mr White looks at him a couple of times while he’s speaking but doesn’t say anything. “Look, man,” Jesse says, “everything you did, you did for your family. She’ll figure that out.”

Mr White doesn’t say anything, but his face gets less blankly miserable and he starts to pay attention to the TV again. He grabs his brandy from the table, holding it with one hand and throwing his other arm around Jesse’s shoulders when he sits back. It pulls Jesse closer to him, until they’re touching. His body is warm and relaxed from the brandy. Physical contact with Mr White always felt weirdly significant, and this is no exception; Jesse feels hyperaware of what’s happening. 

Mr White’s right hand is lightly cupping the side of Jesse’s neck and, apparently unconsciously, his thumb starts lightly sweeping back and forth, caressing the skin from behind Jesse’s ear to the spot just behind the curve of his jaw. Jesse suppresses a shiver and dares to take a glance at Mr White. He’s not even looking at Jesse, staring off thoughtfully into the distance. Right. He didn’t even know he was doing it, Jesse just had to ignore it.

Easier said than done. The physical proximity and gentle touches to sensitive skin are having an unwanted effect on Jesse’s body. He casts his mind around for something that will counteract it: naked grandmas, the smell of the portapotty when he fell through the top, the memory of Emilio’s half “disincorporated” corpse cascading through the ceiling and splattering everywhere. That last thought pretty much does it, until Mr White’s attention eventually returns to the TV when the team starts testing whether a car driving fast enough can beat a car falling at terminal velocity in a race. His thumb stops moving, finally, and Jesse can relax.

“Terminal velocity is the highest speed an object can go as it falls,” Mr White explains in a low voice. Jesse didn’t ask, and he’s pretty sure they’re about to explain that on the show anyway, but he guesses it’s a reasonable guess on Mr White’s part that Jesse doesn’t know what a scientific term means and he does love his lectures. Jesse kind of likes them too, honestly. He’s never been good at the really theoretical or mathematical parts of science, as his chemistry grades had reflected, but he likes the practical stuff. The stuff you can see happening or that you can do. He understands it so much better that way. And he likes Mr White explaining it to him, focused on his topic and confident that Jesse will be able to understand it. It kind of reminds him of high school, how Mr White had been so insistent that Jesse could really succeed as long as he applied himself. 

So this would all be fine, except that Mr White has turned his head to speak to him, and they’re so close that this means that he’s speaking directly into Jesse’s ear, his beard ghosting against sensitive skin. Jesse’s problem is back with a vengeance. His pulse races as blood surges downward to pool in his stiffening cock. Mr White seems to be totally ignorant of this, too engrossed in his science lecture.

“It happens when the sum of the buoyancy and drag force are equal to the force of gravity pulling the object downwards. As the speed of the object increases, so does the drag force acting on it,” Mr White rumbles in his ear. Jesse’s face is burning and he swears he can practically feel the vibration of Mr White’s voice. He carefully modulates his breathing and keeps his muscles relaxed. There’s nothing he can do about his reddened face, but Mr White is probably too tipsy to notice. Jesse can poker-face his way through this, as long as Mr White doesn’t look down.

“The drag force depends on what medium the object is falling through - it will be different in water compared to air, for example,” Mr White continues, and God, why won’t he just stop talking? Or at least do it further away, or with his head turned the other way, or whatever. Any way where he’s not practically kissing Jesse’s ear would be great, actually. His pants are oversized enough that they aren’t tight on his hard cock, but he knows without looking down that there will be a visible tent in his pants.

“So when an object reaches terminal velocity, the net force on it is zero, so it has zero acceleration. In other words, terminal velocity is the fastest the car will be able to fall.” Mr White finishes his little impromptu science lesson, finally, and for an instant of dizzying relief Jesse thinks everything is going to be fine. Then Mr White shifts in his seat, inadvertently scraping the nails of his right hand lightly along the side of Jesse’s neck.

Jesse gives a sharp, audible inhale of air and his brandy glass slips through his suddenly numb fingers. The liquor splatters over his lap and he leaps up, mostly standing with one knee resting on the couch.

Mr White’s eyes go to the spilled brandy on Jesse’s legs, then to the erection tenting his sweatpants. Jesse is frozen, wide-eyed. Mr White looks up and their eyes meet. Jesse can’t move or speak. His chest feels cold and hollow with horror and humiliation. Mr White is first expressionless, then, for an instant, looks like he’s thinking hard. 

Then he reaches out, cups the back of Jesse’s head, tangling his fingers in his hair. He pulls him in and presses his lips against Jesse’s.

It takes a second for Jesse to remember to breath through his nose. It’s different to kissing Jane, different to kissing any of the women Jesse has been with. Mr White’s beard scrapes against Jesse’s clean-shaven skin. He coaxes Jesse’s mouth open with gently insistent motions of his lips. He tastes of brandy and Jesse can smell his cologne, something musky and old-fashioned. Jesse’s mouth feels alive with sensation, tingling like he’s just taken a slug of brandy himself, and the movement of Mr White’s tongue against his pulls an embarrassing but thankfully quiet sound from his throat. He practically melts against him, his hands bracing against Mr White’s shoulders to avoid collapsing on him, when Mr White’s warm hand cups his erection through the fabric of his sweatpants and rubs firmly.

Mr White breaks the kiss after a long, intoxicating moment. He pulls back and looks at Jesse, the green of his eyes made striking by the way his pupils have expanded with arousal. He keeps rubbing Jesse through his pants, staring intently at every flicker of Jesse’s expression as he skilfully and efficiently brings him to the edge of orgasm. For a second, Jesse thinks Mr White is going to make him come in his pants like a teenager. Then he stops, pulls his hand away. Jesse makes an involuntary, humiliating noise as his hips jerk and his cock twitches in his pants, a breath away from coming.

“Come here,” Mr White says, voice low, and pats his own thigh briskly to invite (command) Jesse to sit in his lap. 

There’s a part of Jesse that knows this is a bad idea, but it’s drowned out by the bigger part of him that just wants to continue, the part of him that’s lonely and already hopelessly aroused and maybe kind of likes this, Mr White focusing on him, wanting him. So he obeys, swinging his leg over to straddle Mr White’s thighs and awkwardly shuffling forward. It’s not enough for him, apparently, because Mr White grabs Jesse’s ass and tugs him further forward until Jesse’s knees are braced at either side of Mr White’s hips. They’re close enough that if Jesse shifts forward a little, he can feel Mr White’s clothed dick hardening against him. His hips twitch at the sensation of Mr White’s body heat and the knowledge that he wants this too, and he’s tempted to grind against him. He’s forestalled by Mr White tugging his sweatpants and boxers down until his erection springs free, already leaking precome from being brought so close to the edge before. 

Mr White’s hand encircles Jesse’s cock, stroking gently. The touch is torturously light after being so close to coming. Jesse’s hips unconsciously rock into Mr White’s grip and he clings to his shoulders for balance. Mr White kisses him again as his other hand slips underneath Jesse’s shirt, sliding up his stomach to his chest. His mouth leaves Jesse’s to deliver open-mouthed kisses and light scrapes of teeth to the side of his neck, making Jesse whine breathily. Mr White’s thumb rubs light circles over one of Jesse’s nipples, making him shudder, not sure whether he wants to pull away or press closer to the teasing touch. Mr White makes the decision for him as his hands vanish from Jesse’s body, turning instead to the task of pulling up his shirt. Jesse helps him eagerly, pulling it over his head and tossing it to the side. Afterwards, Mr White guides his hands back to his shoulders. 

“Leave them there,” he tells Jesse. Jesse gives him a look intended to convey how unimpressed he is by Mr White’s little power trip, hoping it isn’t undercut too badly by the fact that his face is burning and his cock is rock hard. Mr White’s slight smirk tells him that that probably does take away from the effect. He doesn’t worry about it too much, though, because then Mr White’s hands and mouth are on him again. He strokes Jesse’s erection more firmly now, rubbing his thumb gently over the head and giving a little twist on his upward strokes that has Jesse panting and squirming. Mr White pinches his nipple and rolls it between his thumb and index finger, the sensations shooting straight to his aching cock. A hot mouth kisses his collarbone, then sucks a stinging bruise onto it. Jesse fists the material of Mr White’s jacket tightly and breathes harshly. 

“Mr White...” he breathes, hips thrusting involuntarily in search of harder contact. Instead Mr White lets go completely. He ignores Jesse’s whimpers of “please, please” in favour of undoing his belt and fly, pulling out his own rigid dick and giving it a few firm strokes while Jesse tries not to stare. He locks his gaze with Jesse’s while he brings his hand to his mouth and licks his palm.

The breath is punched out of Jesse’s lungs when the saliva-slicked hand returns to stroke his and Mr White’s cocks together. Mr White is still staring at him like he’s trying to memorise every twitch of his facial expression. Breathy whimpers and pleas spill from Jesse’s throat with every tight pass of that hand, and Mr White must have been far more affected than he’d seemed because, minutes later, when Jesse spills over the edge with a long groan, Mr White grunts and comes only seconds later, his come mingling with Jesse’s own on his bare chest.

Jesse is boneless and blissful in the afterglow, breathing hard against Mr White’s neck. He thinks he could stay like this forever, but all too soon Mr White is gently pushing at his shoulders to encourage him to move. He shifts uprights, moves his hands from Mr White’s shoulders where he had, embarrassingly, obediently kept them. He grabs his shirt from beside him, uses it to wipe the come from his chest, snickering at Mr White’s theatrical look of disgust. 

“What? It’ll come out in the wash, yo.”


	4. Horse With No Name

Walt wakes up with a hangover and the sickly sensation of realising that he’s made a terrible mistake. The previous night is a brandy-soaked blur that he has to piece together in flashes of memory.

He remembers Jesse as a warm weight against his shoulder, falling asleep while watching television beside Walt. He remembers getting up to go to bed, taking a strange amount of care in easing Jesse down to lie on his side, still asleep. The bottle of expensive brandy Jesse had brought had been sitting empty on the coffee table. He remembers Jesse’s face, relaxed in sleep, and feeling a bizarre surge of tenderness. He remembers Jesse was shirtless; he’d managed to drape a blanket over him before stumbling to his bedroom.

Why was Jesse shirtless?

It takes him a while to remember: he’d been a few drinks in at the time and many more drinks in by the time he had gone to bed. When he does, the nausea from his hangover intensifies until he’s up and bolting to the bathroom, barely making it in time to make sure he threw up in the toilet and not on the floor. He washes his mouth out immediately after, urgently wanting to get rid of the taste of bile and brandy. 

The time between What Happened and going to bed is still a blur, but he can remember all too vividly what he did. Remembers how smooth Jesse’s skin was under his hands, how warm and responsive his mouth was under Walt’s, how Jesse’s moans and whimpers had made his blood rush.

God, what has he done?

He’s a married man. He loves his wife, he loves his family. In a perfect world, he’d be at home, making them breakfast. Skyler would be alternately tending to Holly and calling for Walter Junior to hurry up lest he be late for school. Walt smiles at the thought.

Everything he’s done has been for them. He would do anything for them. He doesn’t know where last night fits into that. Kissing, touching someone else, someone who is not his wife, an ex-student no less... what would Skyler think if she knew? Would she be angry, disgusted? Would this be worse than the manufacture of methamphetamines, to her?

But then, it had been her that had demanded the separation. She had kicked him out. She had tried to exile him from the family. He hadn’t wanted to go, he had wanted to remain with her. He had never been disloyal before - of course, he had found it ridiculous when Skyler had said she had suspected an affair between him and Gretchen - and if not for this separation, he never would have been.

And he had been drunk. They had both been drunk.

They had both been lonely, too. Walt had refrained from saying anything, but even through the haze of his drunken sorrow he had thrilled internally when Jesse mentioned that his relationship with Jane was over. It wasn’t that he had a problem with Jesse’s relationships, but that girl had been a toxic presence in his life - and Walt’s life, too, in all honesty - and it was for the best that she was out of it now.

So they were both alone, lonely, drunk. It was the perfect set of conditions for this kind of mistake to be made. Hell, it even explained why Walt had made this particular mistake with who he did. It happened in wartime with soldiers, on long voyages with sailors, even in prisons. When the individual, or the sex, one preferred wasn’t available, one would make do with whoever was available. It was only natural. It could have happened with anyone. It would never happen again.

Walt’s relief at figuring out why this had happened to him is diminished slightly when he hears Jesse in the kitchen and realises that he’s going to have to say something. Hopefully Jesse has come to a similar conclusion, though Walt wonders if it would have been harder for him - the boy had always seemed quite averse to being considered a “homo”, after all.

Walt has to go out there. He has work today, and he has to take Walter Junior to school. There’s no way around it, so he steels himself and walks into the kitchen.

Jesse has never seemed like a morning person, but the advantages of youth mean that he’s irritatingly healthy-looking and alert this morning, seemingly having avoided Walt’s pounding headache and lingering nausea. He’s bustling around the kitchen, making coffee and frying eggs. He’s already dressed for the day. He’s wearing his usual oversized pants, but his shirt is one that is only a couple sizes too big. When he turns around, Walt realises that this shirt is the only one that covers the mark that Walt tries not to remember leaving on Jesse’s throat.

“Yo, Mr White, you want some coffee? Eggs?” Jesse asks, jiggling the frying pan a little for emphasis. Walt’s nausea spikes at the idea of eating anything fried at that moment, but he manages to accept a cup of coffee and even request some toast.

Jesse immediately busies himself with making the toast. Walt does not watch the way the muscles in Jesse’s back move as he puts the bread in the toaster and goes back to cooking the eggs. He decides that he should broach the subject now, while they don’t have to make eye contact.

“Jesse, about last night,” Walt begins and thinks he sees Jesse’s shoulders tense, “we were both drunk and we’re both, er, both in something of a strange place right now. It was just - a mistake.” Jesse’s back is still to him and Walt suddenly wishes he’d waited until he could see Jesse’s face. He’s not sure why, but he feels compelled to add, “I’m married, Jesse.”

Jesse finally turns around, grabbing a plate and taking the eggs out of the frying pan. “Yeah, of course,” he says. He looks unruffled in the same deliberate way Walt has seen a hundred times before. “You’ve got your family.”

“Right,” Walt agrees, relieved. “The best course of action may be to simply pretend this whole thing never happened.”

The toaster dings. Jesse grabs another plate and smiles. “I’ve already forgotten.”

 

By some miracle, Walt is only a few minutes late for work. Just being in that school, trying to educate class after class of disinterested teenagers, renews his fatigue. Walter Junior finds him during lunch. His son tells him about how things are going at home and questions him relentlessly about his quiet mood and reddened eyes. Other than this, his day passes in a blur of exhaustion. He finds he actually prefers this to the days when he’s alert enough to be actively disappointed at how few of his students apply themselves. 

When he gets back home, Jesse is out. Now that they’ve cleared everything up, Walt knows there’s no reason to feel any lingering awkwardness, but he can’t help but feel relieved. But sitting in his empty, silent apartment just emphasises how alone Walt is. He wishes he could hear Walt Junior tapping on his computer keyboard, working on his homework (or that damn website), or Holly fussing, or even Skyler telling him about her day at work, even though he’s earned enough money that she can stay at home with Holly for as long as she needs.

In the end, he goes to bed early and doesn’t rise when he hears Jesse come in. It’s still light out, but Jesse doesn’t open his bedroom door or say anything. Walt is, absurdly, both relieved and disappointed. He still has some lingering concerns that Jesse will have some kind of belated homophobic breakdown, but he also longs for the balm of Jesse’s unassailable belief that everything would turn out alright.

Jesse always believed in Walt, in his capability, in the purity of his motives. He believed in him so completely, even when he didn’t, couldn’t, believe in himself. Why couldn’t she?

The next day, Walt’s making breakfast when Jesse announces that he would be out again today.

“Apartment hunting - gonna chase up a few leads today,” he explains. “Got my stuff from my old place yesterday.” Walt hadn’t even noticed - Jesse might have had an extra bag or two, but he certainly hadn’t moved in any furniture. He supposes it’s none of his business and tries to just be glad that Jesse seems motivated to find a new place to live. Walt himself hopes to do the same, honestly. Well, more accurately, to be welcomed back to the place he used to live.

He returns to the apartment after another day of trying to foster scientific comprehension in the brains of blank-eyed adolescents and stops dead in his tracks when he gets near his front door. Walt Junior is sitting on the ground, a packed bag beside him. He smiles. “Hey, Dad.”

 

He has to call Skyler, of course. She’s already angry enough at him, and she already wants to keep him away from the kids. Somehow, he manages to convince her to let him bring Walt Junior directly to the family home. It’s a tiny foothold, but it’s one Walt takes eagerly. Maybe there’s a part of him that understands Skyler’s actions. Before his diagnosis, he would never have expected this of himself. It isn’t that surprising that she’s shocked, horrified. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel just a little bit pleased that his son wants so badly to see him that he’ll defy his mother.

He does his best to conceal it, but he’s even more pleased to hear that according to Walt Junior, even Hank and Marie are on his side. Saul is right - Skyler isn’t willing to tell anyone what he’s been doing. Perhaps Jesse is right, too, that Skyler will see that his actions were motivated by the need to secure his family’s future. Maybe she’s beginning to realise that he did it all for them. Maybe she’s realising he’s still the same man, still her reliable, loyal husband. 

He wants to make a good impression for the first time she’s seen him in days: he slaps on some cologne and picks up dinner, pepperoni pizza and dipping sticks. She had been on her own with a baby for weeks - by choice, but still, surely she’ll appreciate his forethought. Maybe she’ll be willing to at least have dinner with him. 

She doesn’t. She shuts the door of his own home in his face.

Jesse is at the apartment when he gets back, still simmering with rage. He wants more than anything to grab some beers, but that might not be a great idea considering what happened last time.

Jesse doesn’t seem to notice his agitation, engrossed in flipping through channels. “Hey, Mr White. Where you been?”

“At my house. Talking with my wife,” Walt says, and it’s not quite a lie. “How did you go finding a place?”

“Not bad. Think I’ve found somewhere that’s cool with me paying in cash and moving in right away.”

“That’s good,” Walt says, the plan that’s been percolating in his mind since he saw his son finally becoming concrete. “I’m going home tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for kind of skimming over stuff at the end, I didn’t want to end up basically recapping Caballo Sin Nombre.


	5. Worlds Apart

_Jane had been home by the time Jesse had gotten to his old apartment and had come out to talk to him, holding her sketchpad, after he’d loaded up his car with the stuff he was taking._

_“Hey, Jesse.”_

_“Oh, uh... hey,” he had replied stupidly._

_“You look good,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. Her tone and stance were determinedly casual._

_“Uh, yeah, so do you,” he said, and she did look good. She looked healthy, not at all like he’d last seen her. He was so conscious of what he had done to her that he could barely meet her eyes._

_“Trying to sneak off before I could get your new address?” she joked, then added more seriously, “Jesse, I meant what I said. I really do want to be friends.”_

_“Yeah - yeah, I do too, I just - I thought you weren’t home yet... thought, y’know, you’d still be at your dad’s house,” he said, painfully awkward. He gave her his address and she flipped to a new page to write it down._

_“See, if you hadn’t given me that, you’d never get to see the final version of this,” Jane said, grinning and flipping back to the page she had been on, then turning it around to show him. It was a rough sketch of an old-timey pinup girl. Jesse managed a weak smile._

_“How much was rehab?” he blurted out, “I’ll give you the money, I can just go home and get the cash.”_

_Jane paused for a second, Jesse didn’t know if she was thinking it through or thinking of how to say it. “My dad paid, and I think he’d have a couple questions if I suddenly gave him ten thousand dollars in cash.”_

_He shrugs. “I could pay it off slower - you could tell him it’s part of your paycheck.”_

_Jane was silent for a second. “Seriously, Jesse, it’s not your fault. But, I mean, I haven’t exactly been feeling great about, you know...” she trailed off, then shrugged. “How about this - I’ll forgive you, if you forgive me.” She held her hand out for him to shake._

_Jesse didn’t know what to say. “Jane - it wasn’t your fault I started doing heroin - it was my choice.” Jane just raised her eyebrow like he’d proved her point. He gave in and shook her hand because she was insistent and because he wanted to make sure she knew he didn’t blame her for any of it. “I still want to give you the money,” Jesse said doggedly, and Jane kind of laughed but helped him work out a payment schedule._

_As he left, she added, “And say hi to Walt for me.”_

Jesse sets his last bag down. It’s heavy as hell and he lets it down carelessly enough that a loud thud reverberates through the mostly empty apartment. He hadn’t bothered with any of his furniture. He wanted to let Jane and her dad advertise the apartment as furnished; they might as well get something out of their disastrous connection to him besides a hospital bill and a stay in rehab. Plus, he hadn’t wanted to linger in the place where he’d seen the paramedics take Jane away, white-faced and limp on the stretcher. It’s not like he can’t afford to replace stuff anyway. 

So until the stuff he’s arranged to have delivered gets here, there’s no bed or TV, just his bags full of clothes, sheets, his trusty sleeping bag. His drug paraphernalia - his bong, his pipes, the spent needles left over from that night he almost killed Jane - had been gone when he’d gotten there, courtesy of one of Saul’s guys according to Mr White. He’s glad he told him, because otherwise he’d have been seriously worried that Jane’s dad had gone through the place. That guy was already hardly his biggest fan, he didn’t need him seeing hard evidence of what Jesse had been into other than heroin.

Because he _does_ want to be her friend. He doesn’t deserve it, but he wants it and she seems to want that too.

His new apartment is a nice enough place. Ground level, white walls, hardwood floors, like his old apartment next to hers. Good soundproofing. The landlord is a nondescript middle-aged guy named Dave. He mentioned he had a daughter around Jesse’s age and he kind of reminds Jesse of his dad in terms of looks. This guy is pretty relaxed, though, and hadn’t seemed to worry too much about Jesse’s lack of current employment or the fact that he had to pay in cash. He’d just asked for pay stubs when he found a job and checks when Jesse could do them, “so I don’t end up with the IRS up my ass”. He lives alone in the apartment next to Jesse’s. He hears him practicing guitar occasionally and something about his casual friendliness gives Jesse the impression that if he was still using, this guy would be someone who he could share a bowl with.

Decent location, nice decor, chill landlord. Nothing wrong with the place. All in all, it’s about as good as an apartment can get.

There’s nothing wrong with it at all, except that Jesse is alone here. 

 

__

Walt wakes up to an empty apartment, a note from Jesse with his new address, and a voicemail from Skyler about the pizza on the roof and the possibility of a restraining order. He ignores it: it’s _his_ roof too, and he is now far more confident that she is unwilling to involve the authorities. He feels as though he’s seen through her in a way he hasn’t in years, and he knows that she would only become desperate enough to tell the police the truth if she had reason to believe he was dangerous. 

Which she doesn’t, because he isn’t. Before his diagnosis, he had never really stopped to consider how different people who broke the law were to each other. There were real criminals, people who broke the law habitually, or who were willing to hurt people for little reason - like Emilio and Domingo, who were willing to kill him and Jesse simply due to suspicion. Walt had begun criminal activity to provide for his family, and his only acts of violence had been the strictest self-defence. Part of her had to know that, had to know that he was still the man she married. He’s going to show her that he is, and that she can’t get rid of him that easily. They’re his family. 

Getting into his house isn’t as easy as he’d expected - the locks have been changed so his key no longer works. His gut seems to twist and burn with frustration and for a moment he considers simply smashing a window to get in. It’s his house, and it’s not like he doesn’t have the money to repair it. Then he remembers the crawl space, and although he gets considerably dirtier getting in that way, he at least doesn’t have to worry about the sound of breaking glass drawing unwanted attention.

Then he’s in. He’s back in his own house, and he can put his luggage on his own bed and step into his own shower, wash away the grime of crawling underneath the house and wash away the memories of the time he spent away from it. The comforter of the bed that Walt had once shared with his wife looks a little rumpled at the foot of it when he comes out. Had it been like that before? Walt can only frown and straighten it. 

Predictably enough, things go poorly once Skyler returns home. 

Skyler is angry but Walt is resolute: without his wife and children, he has nothing left to lose and her threats hold no power. Regardless, she tries to follow through, and he and Walter Junior - who, unlike his mother, had been pleased to see Walt home - are sharing a snack when the police arrive.

Skyler has been his wife for so many years. He loves her so much; that love is why he’s done what he’s done. It hurts him as much as it must hurt her, to see her options narrow before her, as she speaks to the police officers. He doesn’t want to make her do anything, he doesn’t want to hurt her. He just wants her to understand. He just wants to be a family again.

He’s never struck her, never threatened her, never hurt the kids. As he had known she wouldn’t, she doesn’t tell the police what he _has_ done. They leave, and Walt feels relief, shot through with an unacknowledged triumph. 

__

Jesse gives a truncated grunt of effort as he and Wade finally load the last of the new shipment of table saws onto the shelves. Wade is the other guy who was just hired at the hardware store today; he’s like 6’5” and built like a WWE wrestler, so personally Jesse doesn’t get why he can’t just do it while Jesse takes a smoke break, but he supposes that’s what legitimate employment is like. He’s pretty eager for a break afterwards, though, so he volunteers to return the dolly to its rightful place while Dave goes to the manager for their next job.

Honestly, Jesse is a pretty big fan of the dolly - it sure as hell beat carrying shit and wrecking your back for minimum wage. Actually, he kind of wishes they’d thought to bring one for the methylamine heist, back when Mr White had first come up with his new formula to keep up with Tuco’s demands.

Damn it. This is supposed to be a fresh start kind of thing, reintegrating with regular society or whatever, but Jesse can’t stop thinking back to when he was a criminal. He doesn’t think about every part of being in the drug trade, like cooking with Emilio or coordinating deliveries of pseudo with his smurfs, just the stuff he did with Mr White. Not even all of that stuff - he resolutely keeps his mind off of stuff like the slurry that had once been Emilio cascading through his ceiling, or Spooge’s head bursting like a water balloon filled with blood and brains, or how he and Mr White had gotten Combo killed. But whenever he’s trying to concentrate, there’s always some insignificant memory intruding, like Mr White in his kitchen explaining how powerful thermite is, or that high-five in the RV after Mr White had calculated how much they would make, or the rush of relief and Mr White’s awkward smile when he’d told Jesse he was in remission.

Jesse hasn’t actually heard from Mr White since he’d moved into his new apartment the same day Mr White had gone home. He’s still a little impressed at how quick that guy works, actually - just a couple days before he’d been saying his wife wanted a divorce, then suddenly he was moving back home? Anyway, he totally gets that Mr White’s priority is his family, and it’s not like he misses the guy or anything. He just... thinks sometimes, of stuff they did while they were partners, or wonders what he’s doing right now. That’s pretty normal, right? After they worked together for months, made a crazy amount of money, survived all kinds of messed up situations together.

There’s a time and place for it, though, and it’s not while Jesse’s at work. Stocking the shelves at a hardware store isn’t exactly glamorous or well-paying, but Jesse is sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars here. All he needs is something that he can put on a resume in the future and something that gets him out of his silent, lonely apartment. 

__

Walt is midway through making dinner the next night when Skyler walks in. She’s still in her work clothes and heels, and they still strike Walt as jarringly formal after so many years of her being a housewife. She looks at him, grey eyes the exact shade of steel and storm clouds. And just as friendly. Even before she speaks, he’s uneasy, and when he does her words hit him like a blow to the gut.

“I fucked Ted.”

She walks out and, after a moment of stunned silence, he follows. 

“Ted Beneke?” Walt can’t believe what he just heard. “You cannot be serious. That guy is a joke!”

She turns back to him, staring hard into his eyes. “You know what, Walt? You know what? You called my bluff.”

“I called your — what does that even mean?”

“You dared me to tell the police, and I couldn’t, so you win,” she says, looking at him like she’s challenging him to enjoy his victory. “If you want to stay in this house, fine, but we are not married anymore.”

“I told you I was done cooking meth, Skyler.”

She laughs, dismissive. “Oh, right.”

“I promised you that,” he says, and why can’t he make her understand? For an instant of pure impulse, he wants to tell her about that night with Jesse - but what had happened, really? He’d touched the boy, kissed him - but Skyler had let Beneke - “And so what? At least I didn’t run off to go — Jesus!” he says, because he _didn’t_. Finally, he tries once more to make her understand. “I mean, everything that I did, I did for this family!”

Skyler is unmoved, the picture of disdain. “Oh, yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.”

“Oh, and what is that supposed to mean?” he asks, simultaneously wanting her to just say it and incensed that she would imply he did this for himself.

“You don’t like it? Then leave and take your drug money with you.”

He can’t even look at her anymore; he goes over to the sink to dispose of the vegetable scraps from his aborted dinner. “That’s what you want! Jesus - you think this will get me to move out? You can screw Ted, you can screw the butcher, the mailman, whoever you want. Screw them all! I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good,” she tosses over her shoulder as she leaves. “Suit yourself.”

Walt seethes down at the sink. “You want me to suit myself? I’ll suit myself to his face!”


End file.
